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The National Hospital in East Finchley Part 2, 16 June 1897 Duchess opens ‘Country Branch’ On a bright, rather chill afternoon, visitors assemble in the spacious central hall of the National Hospital’s newly built 40-bed ‘country branch’. Many have come from King’s Cross by special train to this pretty village. It is Diamond Jubilee Year, and the Duchess of Albany, Queen Victoria’s widowed daughter-in-law, is to perform the opening ceremony. Visitors admire the richly coloured interior of the building, and the watercolours of fruit and flowers, donated by well-wishers, which adorn the walls. The grounds have been laid out with wide lawns, herbaceous flower borders, shrubberies, a fruit and vegetable garden, and specimen trees - cypress, poplar, fir, holly, and pine. The trees are newly planted, and the visitors can only imagine how beautiful they will be in 100 years’ time. It looks more like an attractive country house than a branch of the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic. Yet all this is purpose-built; designed, as the dedicatory plaque puts it, “for the benefit of a class of patients inadmissible to any other convalescent home in the kingdom”. All the patients’ accommodation is on the ground floor, to be accessible by wheelchair, with no stairs to pose a hazard to epileptic patients. Fresh air and flower gardens In the years since it opened its first convalescent home in East Finchley, The Elms, the National Hospital had attained an international reputation in both the medical and surgical fields. It now needed a larger country branch, where patients who had been confined for months to the wards of the Queen Square Hospital might recover faster in fresh country air. The Hospital had made many friends in East Finchley, and the village was easily accessible by train, essential as physicians from London were to make frequent visits. It proved difficult to find a suitable site, but eventually the Ecclesiastical Commissioners released a 3-acre field adjoining East Finchley Station on a 999-year lease. Funds were raised, building work began, and the grounds were laid out. A rubbish-filled pond turned out to be a deep spring, one of the sources of the River Brent, so it was drained and reshaped to became a feature of the landscape garden, with weeping willows, ferns, water-lilies and carp. Trees were planted to screen the Home from the station. All was optimism and confidence. A new chapter in the history of East Finchley and the National Hospital was about to begin. |
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